Oh, the joys of being able to hide behind a false name and spout unlimited untruths.

wondering: “Immigration reform with any substance ain’t gonna happen. unless all of the beneficiaries are non-white and likely to vote PLP, you won’t see anything meaningful.”

Naive Observer: “Immigration reform is their own petard upon which they will be hung. They know what is needed, but they have conditioned their base to reject anything like it.”

John Joseph: “The PLP would rather rack up debt than embrace the economics of growth.”

Above are some of the illogical and offensive comments found under the article entitled “Dickinson: Immigration ‘front and centre’,” published in The Royal Gazette on February 25.

Interesting comments indeed. Just a little fact check.

Political parties, around the world, are birthed out of the respective socio-economic communities that they represent.

As prime examples, courtesy of Wikipedia:

“The Conservative Party was founded in 1834 from the Tory Party. Positioned on the centre-right of British politics, the Conservative Party is ideologically conservative.”

“Liberal Party of Canada (French: Parti libéral du Canada) is the oldest and longest-serving political party in Canada. The party espouses the principles of liberalism and generally sits at the centre to centre-left of the Canadian political spectrum.”

Those that follow either one of the above parties, do so because of their fundamental beliefs in either conservatism or liberalism.

Neither party can tell people what belief system they should have.

Likewise, nearer to home, it did not take the One Bermuda Alliance to create the mindsets and outlooks of their supporters.

They are quite capable of having their own world views, formed by their upbringing and other factors.

Nor does it take the Progressive Labour Party to shape the mindsets and outlooks of its supporters. As they too, have their views formed by what has happened in their lives.

So, the false narrative that the PLP is responsible for how many feel about race and immigration is a convenient way for persons to sidestep the unpleasant historical truths of this island that we call home.

The sad reality is that untold amounts of racist immigration policies were in place for decades, even centuries before the PLP was formed in 1963.

Starting with slavery in 1616, our island’s legislation, policies and practices were deliberately and carefully designed to maintain one group as the dominant political and economic power.

The PLP, as a political entity, was formed in 1963 and supported for the last 57 years, in part, to expose and reverse those decades and centuries-old classist and racist policies that disadvantaged blacks, Portuguese and working-class whites.

Let us, for a brief moment, just imagine if those racist policies were never there to begin with. Our country would have been based on equality and merit long ago.

However, the sad reality is that Bermuda is a 400-year-old British colony, formed along the lines of classism and racism, that has served to put one specific ethnic group in social and economic pole position over all others.

So, for persons to attempt to say that people have opinions based solely on what either political party is saying, is nothing more than denying that Bermudians were subjected to untold legislation that disadvantaged generations of Bermudians, based on their respective social and racial demographics.

Nevertheless, the present government has not sat back and decided to harp on the past, without putting things in place for the future.

For the last two years, a bipartisan group of MPs, from both the PLP and the OBA, have meticulously gone through the exercises of; studying our immigration laws, looking at immigration policies of other similar jurisdictions and interacting with diverse organisations.

All this, to form comprehensive views, empirical facts and figures, in order to craft balanced legislation and policies.

Simply put, those who claim that the Government will only put out legislation that benefits blacks or the PLP are saying so out of either ignorance or wilful misdirection.

How can that be if there are two OBA MPs in the same room, with equal say?

Will the commenters, who hide behind false names, seek to accuse them of putting forth legislation that is racist in nature?

The ironic reality is this: the major proportion of people who will benefit from immigration reform will be those who were never subjugated to those racist policies of the not too distant past.

Why is that?

Simply put, the present government will not do unto others, what was done to us.